Bringing Our Strengths to Creating Worship

A. (1) What has been the most striking worship experience of your life?

(2) What made it so special? Try to be as specific as possible.

B. What part of this special experience could you have actually played a part in doing? Organizing? Developing? Coaching? Taking a role in the service? Again, try to be as specific as possible.

C. Building an Effective Worship/Sunday Services Committee:

(1) Organizing and co-ordinating services

(2) Developing “in-house” services and coaching

(3) Co-ordinating hospitality

May Partridge, 2005

1 Elements of a Worship Service

Openings:

- welcome - necessary announcements and special thanks - introductions - opening music - chalice lighting, with opening words - candles of care and concern

Building to the Message:

- children’s focus - readings, responsive readings - hymns - meditation, contemplation or prayer

Presenting the Message:

- talks, sermons or homilies - dialogue and discussion - collections of readings or short talks - plays, pageants, dance, or visual presentations (e.g., slide shows) - central rituals or ceremonies (e.g., flower communion)

Closings:

- hymns - offering - closing words, extinguishing the chalice - closing music

Each of these elements may be ritualized within a particular congregation; each can play a part in creating a sense of the ultimate, of ceremony and celebration, of what some may call spirituality.

May Partridge, 2005

2 “Flow” and “Fit” in the Worship Service

“Flow” is the sense that mood and timing have been established to develop a theme. “Fit” emerges when all the elements of a service feel like they further the intention of the theme; that is, they develop it, bring it to a climax and then release the energy so that the congregation can take it back out into the world.

To develop flow, think about:

- setting - time of day - what each element contributes to establishing mood and pacing (esp. music) - appropriate times to “keep it moving” or to pause - “directing traffic”

To ensure fit, think about:

- resisting the desire to “cherry-pick” - bringing together compatible types of activities - words: meanings and repetitions of meanings - music: what it says and how it feels

To help build your skills in co-ordinating services with flow and fit, let’s divide into small groups and consider a practice case.

The Case: Amarylis is co-ordinating a Sunday morning worship service for a CUSO volunteer who has just returned from Tanzenia, Africa, and who has been teaching villagers more effective and environmentally-sound practices in subsistance agriculture. From her conversations with him, it sounds like the main point of his talk is as follows: “ From my work in Africa, I learned that Western aid can only succeed when we are willing to involve the whole community in assessing and developing their own solutions to local problems.”

Put in Unitarian-Universalist terms, what theme could Amarylis develop in this service? What mood could she try to establish?

Specifically, what elements can she draw from Singing the Living Tradition to help her establish the feeling and the message she wants to convey? Choose a chalice-lighting, a responsive reading, a hymn and a closing she might use.

May Partridge, 2005

3 Preparing for or Coaching a Talk in a Sunday Service

1. Mess around until you are clear about what major point you wish to make. Remember, your service needs a theme: you should be able to state that in 25 words or less. Such a statement does not mean there are other meanings that cannot be found in or evoked by your talk, it simply means you have a purpose. You know where you’re going. Everything gets simpler after that. 2. Develop a sequence of ideas that build up to your main point. Depending on this main idea, the sequence could be one of story-telling, of reasons for (or against), of steps in a process, of comparison and contrast, or an analysis of the parts of something. Sketch this development out before you begin to write. 3. Write for the ear. Use simple sentences more than long ones, but when you do create a long statement, make sure it’s easily understood. Read it out loud to yourself; read it to someone else. Remember, your audience is going to hear this once. Don’t be afraid to repeat words and ideas in summaries as you develop the sequence of ideas that leads to your main point. 4. Write for the heart. Appeal to your audience’s values. Tell stories, your stories, because people love stories. But always remember they are your stories, not necessarily those of others. Your stories are sources that others may learn from, and worthy of respect, but remember to be inclusive – exclusively masculine or feminine perspectives or specific perspectives of a particular ethnic experience or class need to be related to humanity’s broader experiences. 5. Time the reading of your text. You will practice your delivery, of course. But use it also to be sure you will fit into the time limits in your service. Don’t assume you can just speed up your reading, or slow it down, and make your talk fit. Changes in pace that don’t fit with the message you’re trying to deliver will tend to destroy its effect. Better to edit your talk to the essentials for making the point than to rush. Also better to have your talk’s anticipated gap in time filled in by suitable music or reaction from the congregation, than to drag it out.

Coaching someone who is developing a talk can follow these principles also. Encourage your speaker to explore ideas with you, until he or she is clear about the main point of the presentation (leaving you then free to race off and find hymns, readings, etc. that fit). Be prepared to suggest ways your speaker might organize the development of the talk so that “one thing leads to another.” But encourage first, by talking further with the speaker, what ideas he or she has for building up to the main point. That’s where you may provoke some real creativity. Read what is then written for clarity and effect, and be prepared to suggest cuts or other alternatives. Remember, always work from the strengths of the talk, not its problems. Suggest always that the effective parts will be made even more so by whatever adjustments appear necessary.

May Partridge, 2005

4 An exercise for learning and practising the skills of oral presentation (as adapted from Robert Mazzerole, Capital UU Congregation):

Chose one of the Seven Principles about which you have strong feelings. Examine how you learned about that principle’s operation in your own life and what it has taught you. You may want to talk about it as you saw it earlier in your life, or as you see it now. Write and practice in your group a two to three-minute presentation on this principle.

With some adjustments, this talk may be used later in your group’s development and practice of a mini-service.

May Partridge, 2005